"Bleak House" is Dickens' ninth book and is considered one of his best and most complete novels, with a plethora of main and secondary characters. It is not merely a great Victorian novel, a commentary on society, and a satire of the judicial system. It is also a romance, a melodrama, one of the first detective stories in English literature, a large-scale social epic, as well as his most inventive work. In the 19th century, where the battle between Romanticism and Utilitarianism, heart and mind, raged, Dickens, with his work, defended both sides. From a historical perspective, this great novel coincides with the reform of the English criminal code, the decline of the aristocratic class, and the rise of the modern police force in England, marking the most conservative period of the rise of the middle class and controlled social reforms. It represents the transition of social power from the heartless and unjust aristocratic society, with its privileges and secrecy, to a more democratic world governed by justice and a sense of duty.